Archive for the ‘5-Catastrophism’ Category

A friend of mine was asking about what I was doing now that I was no longer blogging about the Mayan Calendar and I told him that I was still here.

Strange as it may seem, there seems to be more interest in the subject now that the dreaded “end date” of the 21st of December has passed.

The media is no longer covering the story… gun control and the sequester seems to be on everyone’s mind instead. And most of the catastrophists have wrapped up their tents and left for the next big thing. But I seem to be having more readers now than I had before.

Yes, all the misinterpretations about the Mayan Calendar have disappeared from the mainstream and I am still over here talking it up.

Why? Because the event which the Mayan spoke of has not yet come to pass: the Birth of the New Sun.

And until it arrives, we will still be waiting for it.

It won’t be the end of the world, just the beginning of the next Sun.

(You can see my posts leading up to December 21st, 2012, for the full story of what the Mayans were talking about.)

As the end of the Long Count (21 Dec. 2012) arrived in the middle of the tzolkin, one might expect the end of the tzolkin (31 March 2013) to be of some importance.

The Mayan Elders seem to think so. Don Alejandro is calling for a rather “lengthy eclipse”.

But if this date is wrong as well, it does not mean the new Sun won’t be coming, it just means the dating is in error.

Okay, so they’ve found some orphan planets out there and, well, it just didn’t quite fit their mathematical model and its back to the drawing board on that one, huh?

Actually, it seems every year they discover more and more things that cannot be explained by current theory and rather than rework the mathematical construct of how the universe actually works – which, I understand, would be one heck of a lot of work – they spend more money on bigger and better telescopes and deep-space arrays to learn even more about the universe that they have to cobble onto their construct.

Recent forays into the realms of cosmology and cosmic mechanics have shown that they still have not cleared up several anomalies they found decades ago. There are theories about how galaxies form and the levels of energies that maintain their spiral forms. And interesting photo from years ago showed two galaxies apparently passing through each other. With the universal forces moving steadily outward from the point of the big bang, how did two of these fellows turn into each other at a ninety degree angle?

And then there was the remnant of another such accident found elsewhere: the lower portion of one galactic arm had been severed off and was floating at some remove from the galaxy. You could see the wounded galaxy, one of its limbs cut off. Nearby was the limb that had been cut. The really interesting thing about this was that the limb was apparently intact and still holding its shape – being a mirror image of the galaxy’s remaining limb.

Why was there no sight of the purported galaxy that had passed through this one to cause the severed limb? And why was the limb still so perfect? There seemed no ravages of the tremendous forces that had separated it from its body… no string of stars stretching back from the wound… nothing. It could have been photo-shopped, it was so perfect. But this was years before that particular program existed.

Our understanding of the infinite cosmos – despite assurances to the contrary by the prominent lights of the field like the late Dr. Carl Sagan – is not really very complete at all. The ostracized heretic, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky seemed to have a far better grasp of what was going on that his detractors. Sure, his theories had some flaws in it but it deserved a better hearing than it got.

And seeing how much farther today we are getting (and it gets further everyday) from understanding the cosmos isn’t it time to get a little real and just admit our monumental lack of understanding?

I started toying with the idea of writing a novel about the Mayan obsession with time while I was in college. Being in statistical studies drew me to their use of cycles and, naturally, to study their calendar.

Years later, after raising a family and getting established in my career, I had time to turn to that subject again and I started looking for research materials for the novel.

That’s when I first encountered the “2012 Phenomenon”.

Astonished, I went through the books by Argüelles, Jenkins, Calleman, and a couple of dozen other writers and could not believe the interpretations they were giving to the Calendar, its End-Date, its purpose and the motivations of its creators.

It seemed as if they were studying something completely foreign to me, so I delved deep in the subject for a time until I understood a bit better about what was going on.

Then, naturally, I thought I should write a book about it and show a different perspective on the subject.

Well, that did not seem to go anywhere.

That was in 2007 and I started blogging about the subject, moving over to WordPress in 2009 and continued. I landed a radio interview three years ago and several nibbles from literary agents.

Apparently, even Bear and Company – who published most of the books on the 2012 Phenomenon – were not interested in anything other than the spiritualistic view of the Mayan Calendar.

Then 2012 finally arrived and my volume was still sitting on the shelf, awaiting publication. When a book is sold, it generally takes 12-18 months to reach the market. And my volume was beyond the point of being “marketable” because of the timing.

Self-publishing was an option that I could not consider because it took money and I don’t have superfluous resources lying around. But then I heard of Kindle. Digitally self-publish.

And so, my volume is finally done and on the market over at Amazon.

And, no, I don’t expect it to be any sort of bestseller. I don’t think the other writers in this field have made any substantial amount of money from this niche market either.

Still, it was something I thought needed to be said, and it is out there if anyone is interested.

There is a lot of upheaval in history. Nations invade and destroy other nations, wars leave millions homeless or dead. Diseases have ravaged the world repeatedly decimating populations on a large scale like the Black Death, or on the small scale like the European diseases introduced into the Native American populations with disastrous results.

But all that history involves humans. Mother Nature, on the other hand, seems to have been the perfect hostess over the eons. Sure mountains were built but very slowly, gradually. Continents have been formed and moved, gradually, slowly, very peacefully.

Science would have us believe that all these massive programs have each taken millennia to accomplish, and so no creatures – especially human ancestors – were much discomfited by the changes.

It paints such a nice and pleasant view of the changes the world has gone through. Sure things like Atlantis have sunk over the years but slowly, a quarter inch at a time, the years encroaching slowly. And, before the waves could encroach on habitations, the people could up and move to higher ground.

Such a pleasant pastoral existence this planet has had. But for one small problem: the evidence.

Encroaching Ice Ages were supposedly a gradual changing of the climate over centuries.

Then why are there mammoths trapped in the ice of the Siberian tundra with the marvelous tropical flora they had been chewing still stuck in its mouth? Why is the forest they had been standing in nothing more than a forest of trunks ripped off at a height of three feet? Where is the pleasant, gradual change we should have anticipated?

Science told us years ago that the age of the dinosaurs ended in such a gradual manner as well. Climate change gradually killed them off. When it was discovered an impact with a massive object probably caused it, the establishment fought the change desperately.

After several years they finally bowed to that evidence but only, I believe, because it could be relegated to a time some 65 million years ago.

Okay, they said, but since then there has only been a slow and gradual change.

In the face of evidence to the contrary they continue their same sad refrain. Why? Quite simple, really. The processes that built the universe they model in their mathematical construct are events measured out, gradually changing the universe, the world. Their construct demands these laws have to be followed and the laws show processes that are regulated, logical, structured.

If the world is really run by such mayhem, catastrophic forces that cannot be mathematically calculated and predicted, what is the point of their wonderfully vaunted science?

Actually, if they would just construct a model that reflects reality, maybe their model would reflect the real world.

Many historians I have read over the ages that talk about dragons only being a mythical creature as evidenced by the prevalence of ancients calling comets “dragons”.

Yes, certainly, the comets do resemble dragons, flying around in the sky with their long tails.

But where would the people get the notion that comets resembled dragons if they did not have something more concrete to base it on.

Dragons cannot have originated in comets or the people would say “Hey, that thing up there looks just like itself!”

They try to find some tangible thing they know about to describe what they see in the sky.

If the myth of the dragon began with a comet, how could people choose to describe it as… well, itself?

Of course, I suppose that one generation could have seen a comet and created the idea that it was some mythical beast and start calling it a dragon so that later generations could see the thing in the sky and call it a dragon, but it seems a stretch.

But maybe not.

Who knows for certain, but I think the legends of dragons speak more about what has been lost than what has merely been imagined.

Besides, why would peoples all around the world speak of the same creature without any prior knowledge of such? You’d think that someone would call it something else, but no, it seems it reminds everyone of dragons.

Given that all calendar systems in the world are built around celestial motions – day and year from the Sun, the month from the Moon, primarily – it is likely that the Mayan Calendar was designed to align with similar phenomena.

Noting their attention to the cycles of the planets – Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn – I would say it is close to a sure bet. They were obsessed with celestial motions. But then so were the majority of ancient civilizations.

But it is also a pretty fair assumption that, from modern scientific theories aside, the celestial motions we see today was not what the ancients were seeing. What evidence is there? Quite a bit, actually.

First of all, many ancient civilizations kept track of the days in a year – as well as the days in a month – and they were all in agreement that the year was 360 days long and the month had thirty days. Then, at the same period, all the calendars went haywire.

Historians say it was simply a case of miscounting. Really? I might believe that if they all had different numbers for the year but most were in agreement of 360 days. And when the numbers went crazy, it was the same the world around. And after a few years they all came up with the new numbers for the year and month lengths… and they were, again, in agreement.

It was not that the ancients did not know how to count, what they were counting was something we can no longer see. And what did they see? I don’t know if we’ll ever know. Some creative mathematician could probably put the data into a formula and come up with an answer, but that is not my strength.

One person even suggested that the length of the year was 260 days in the far distant past and the reason for the length of the tzolkin, but I have not found corroborating evidence.

If Velikovsky is correct, we can understand their fascination – or horror – with the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury. But why the reverence – or is it apprehension? – of the Pleiades? It is not like they could have gone out of orbit and had a close encounter with Earth… they are not in orbit. But could something have come from the direction of the Pleiades in the past that made them wary of that constellation?

Their myths would seem to indicate something of the sort but, once again, exactly what is not quite known.

I wonder if someone has done an astrological or astronomical study on this subject?

With the talk of Velikosky and the catastrophic view of cosmic history for planet Earth, I thought I would throw in my two cents worth. It seems almost everyone has a theory about how we got here, and I am no different.

The usual scientific theories involve the planets coalescing from remnant Solar material or something along that line which would imply all the planets came into being pretty much around the same time, give or take a million years or so.

Velikovsky’s notion was that the planets were created in different fashions and at differing times, some even within the cultural history of mankind. That runs completely contrary to the standard scientific model. Others suppose Venus to be a late-comer on the scene, like Velikovsky, but still millions of years old, unlike the catastrophic view.

Years ago I heard a theory, after scientists detected radio noise coming from Jupiter, that Jupiter was a nascent solar object, either an unborn star or one gearing up for such. My thought was quite the reverse of their theory: Jupiter had already been through the solar stage.

Several ancient civilizations have stories about ancient gods coming in pairs like the Hero Twins of Mayan myth, sons of one of an older set of twins. It struck me that Uranus and Neptune are similar as are the pair, Jupiter and Saturn.

So, I wondered, what if the Uranus-Neptune pair was a Sun that pulled apart and shed molten material, smelted from the furnace of its interior, to form planets. Perhaps a similar fate awaited the next stellar object: Jupiter-Saturn. Maybe this system had been a binary star system until the demise of Jupiter-Saturn, or a trinary system earlier.

Either way, the planets were formed of the molten substance formed in the center of the stellar object and when it got too large and unbalanced was thrown out of the gaseous sphere.

Similar to this is the molten center of our planet, still smelting the elements at its core. Every so often, slag rises to the surface of the mix and hits the underside of one of the plates forming the crust. This could cause an earthquake, or perhaps it is the cumulative effect of repeated impacts that cause the imbalance and the earthquakes.

And it is the rotating smelter of the core that actually creates gravity by its motion, making a vortex.

One problem I find with the Saturnian Model(s) and such is that they either disregard the myths of the world ages or they give no mechanism for the change of ages. Most simply have some unknown outside agent – i.e. comet or meteor – arrive to change the conditions.

Unfortunately, if they followed the mythologies closer they would see that most ancients mentioned the ages repeated on a cyclic basis, as if there were an established sequence. This means the objections I have mentioned about most doomsday theories on the Mayan Calendar End-Date apply here as well. The theories of random events to further along the Saturnian model disregard the ancient evidence.

Alfred de Grazia lamented in one of his works that he was probably the “last Velikovskian” since so many of the followers of Velikovsky have gone in other directions. I guess that makes two of us as I still think Velikovsky was essentially correct.

Dwardu Cardona said he used to think Velikovsky was correct in the big picture but incorrect in the details, but later changed his opinion to think he was correct in the details but wrong in the big picture.

So many of the catastrophist community has endorsed one or another of the Saturn models. Most endorse either the Talbott/Cardona (/Thornill/Cochrane) model wherein the Earth sat “beneath” the gas giant so that it appeared to be a “god of the North Pole” or the equally popular model that simply has the Earth as a satellite of Saturn. In both models, Saturn is seen as a “dark star” or possibly a binary partner to the Sun, although not in all models.

There is still no consensus on the matter.

One problem with taking the ancient myths and aligning them is that they do not all say the same things, regardless of the statements of Talbott, Cardona and company to the contrary. There are variations as not everyone’s memory is the same. No one’s mythology is the same as another. They claim that all societies proclaim this Saturn as the god at the North Pole – but what about the societies south of the equator? Could they have revered the god of the north that they could not even see?

Who knows?

Did the Maya refer to any of this in their mythology? Perhaps. There is the tale of the Hero Twins shooting Seven Macaw (the previous Sun) out of the World Tree. Some say Seven Macaw is another representation of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) in the Northern Sky, so one could argue this is a tie-in. But that is about as far as the similarity goes.

The prevalence of the planet Saturn in ancient myth has led many catastrophists to hypothesize about its role in the Solar System in the dark period of prehistory.

In case you may have forgotten, according to classic Greek and Roman mythology (among others), Saturn was the father of Jupiter (and the other Titans) and the King of the Gods – that is, after he took a sickle and castrated his own father, Uranus, to seize the throne. Saturn apparently decided to eat all his children but missed Jupiter, who was hiding somewhere. Jupiter came out of the shadows, overthrew his father, and then tied him up with cords and claimed the throne for his own.

Interestingly enough, we can still see those cords still wrapped around Saturn today.

How did the ancients know of this action? Saturn and Jupiter are so far away – yet still seen easily with the naked eye – that the details of such an encounter would have been lost. The only possible explanation (other than dismissing it as a “coincidence”) is that the ancients saw the action at a much closer location to the gas giant than we presently have.

This has led to a variety of competing theories nicknamed “the Saturn Model”, “the Saturn Hypothesis”, or “Saturnian Cosmology”.

Some hypothesize that our planet was in orbit around Saturn like Titan and its other moons – Saturn is seen as a “dark” binary partner of the Sun. Others see the planet Saturn locked into a position in a column of plasma (or such) over our north pole while the Sun lay to our south.

Interesting constructs, both of these theories. Some of these require stretching our understanding of the physical forces that hold the universe together. Velikovsky had envisioned a cosmos without gravitation.

Gravity is an interesting energy as there are many theories concerning it but nothing has been definitively proven – believe it or not. A lot of theories are out there though.

I mentioned this in my previous entry. See there for more on the electric universe theory and the work of Edward Leedskalnin.

Whether any of these theories are correct will have to wait a while until there is something definitive discovered to back them up. My primary concern here is the role of Saturn in the ancient cosmology.

Certain the planet was viewed as a god by many cultures and many around the world recorded his overthrow by his son, Jupiter. Were our ancestors actually close enough to see this drama unfold in the skies overhead?

They must have been because they recorded it, in many places, around the world, long before telecommunications would allow them to “get their stories straight”.

What the world was like when Saturn held rulership is unknown. But if the Aztec data is correct, that previous age would have lasted roughly 5,000 years. But that previous Mayan age had to do with the Sun.

Why is the Sun so rarely seen as the King of the Gods in ancient cultures? Certainly there are many who revered the Solar Disk but exceptionally few who had it as their chief deity.

I have always wondered why.

Perhaps it was because the Sun was static, unmoving – unlike the planets – and had a tendency to go out every 5,000 years or so.

Continuing on the Velikovsky theme, his premier volume, Worlds in Collision, not only challenged the cosmology of astronomers but also the chronology of historians.

Utilizing his comparisons of ancient myths around the world, he was able to establish a baseline for history. From this uniform beginning, he was able to establish a chronology for the ancient world, primarily the Middle East. Unfortunately, this did not match well with what the historians had already established as reflected in works like the multi-volume Cambridge Ancient History.

It seems Immanuel was not making friends anywhere within the scholarly world… except with a long friendship with that other “outsider” Albert Einstein. If I recall correctly, it took years before his work became accepted as well.

Anyway, even before his passing, many of his followers were questioning one part or another of his basic theory and striking out in new directions.

Today, these Neo-Catastrophists have a wide variety of theories circulating, all loosely based on Velikovsky’s work. Many of these concentrate on the historical chronologies while others expend their energies on reformulating the cosmological aspects of his work.

As I mentioned before, the earliest incarnation of his first volume was called Cosmos without Gravitation but was shortened at the request of the publisher to deal only with the events of the Exodus and the period immediately following.

From the physics angle, this concept of “no gravity” seems to defy the bedrock of Newton’s theories. But remember, it is still just a theory. A very workable theory – as it has gotten us to the moon – but still just a theory.

[An interesting sidenote to this issue is the work done by Edward Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant who built a castle of multi-ton stones by himself in the early twentieth century. When asked how he did it he explained it was through his use of “magnetic currents”. Scientists have studied his papers and concluded the man was a charlatan and a crackpot and could not have possibly built it… Yet it stands today.]

Some of Velikovsky’s disciples have developed a theory of an electric universe (Talbott, Cardona, Thornhill, Cochrane, et al) which is a follow up to his concept of a cosmos without gravitation. It is a fascinating theory and intersects this Mayan study in several respects. Primarily how they view the historical cosmological chaos as described by Velikovsky.

One further aspect of their theory is what has become known as “the Saturn Model”. This is a bit too complicated to get into at the time but I will address it in a future entry.

At this juncture I will say that it answers a lot of questions about the ancient myths but to me it seems to avoid many others. Perhaps as the theory evolves it will come to encompass answers to my objections as well.